States Train Sights on School Districts for Interventions

After years of trying to fix troubled schools one at a time, a
number of states are weighing stronger measures for intervening in
low-performing school districts. The shift is seen as an outgrowth of
existing state accountability systems and a response to the federal No
Child Left Behind Act.

During the 1990s, states seized control of troubled districts in
such cities as Cleveland; Compton, Calif.; and Newark and Paterson,
N.J. But while such interventions aren't new, most state accountability
systems have focused on rewards and penalties for individual schools,
rather than for their districts.

Now, states are turning in a bigger way to district-level
strategies, in part because as their own accountability systems mature,
they are finding that low-performing schools often are clustered in a
handful of school systems that are either unable or unwilling to help
them improve.

For example, the Virginia board of education decided to seek more
authority to intervene in districts after a series of academic reviews
of individual schools.

"It became obvious that, in many of these schools, the problem was
not simply an individual school; it was a system problem that
originates at the central office," said board President Thomas M.
Jackson Jr. A bill introduced last week in the Virginia legislature,
House Bill 1294, would allow the state board to go to court to force
uncooperative districts to carry out plans to improve student
achievement.

"As is true with certain dysfunctional families, there are
dysfunctional school systems," Mr. Jackson added, "which, ultimately,
are going to require judicial intervention to break the logjam."

District-level intervention has been proposed recently in other
states as well. In those moves:

Louisiana's state board of education approved a plan to pluck up
to 14 chronically low-performing schools from the New Orleans system
and place them in a state-run "recovery district." The board is
seeking applications from outside groups—including universities
and nonprofit organizations—to operate the schools as
charters.

A Massachusetts task force appointed by Gov. Mitt Romney, a
Republican, submitted proposals for dealing with districts declared
underperforming. The state board of education identified the first
two such districts—the Holyoke and Winchendon
schools—late last year.

At the request of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, Minnesota
Commissioner of Education Cheri Pierson Yecke appointed a working
group to consider steps to take in underperforming school
systems.

North Carolina officials have expanded an assistance program for
districts with large proportions of low- achieving students to 10
school systems, up from one last year.

'Dysfunctional Systems'

In Louisiana, state board members grew concerned about a handful of
schools that have remained "academically unacceptable" since the state
accountability system there was launched in 1999.

"These are schools that have not made progress," said Robin G.
Jarvis, the director of school standards, accountability, and
assistance for the Louisiana Department of Education. While districts
have taken measures to work with such schools, she added, the state
decided it needed to step in "a little more rapidly."

Last October, voters in Louisiana approved a constitutional
amendment that gave the state board the power to manage and operate
such public schools directly. Act 9, passed by the legislature, also
permits the board to create and operate a separate "recovery district"
for such schools.

The state can place low-performing schools in the recovery district
if their home district fails to submit reconstitution plans for them,
if the state board of education does not approve the plans, or if the
local school system fails to carry out the plans as agreed.

In addition, schools that have been rated "academically
unacceptable" for four years in a row can be put in the recovery
district.

Initially, many state accountability systems tried to bypass
districts entirely and work directly with schools, observed Heinrich
Mintrop, an associate professor of education at the University of
California, Los Angeles. In part, he said, states took that tack
because they saw districts as part of the problem.

Federal Nudge

But, increasingly, he said, states have come to recognize that
providing rewards and sanctions for individual schools is not enough.
Such schools also need what is known as capacity-building—such as
curriculum reform, more aggressive teacher recruitment, and better
professional development.

"Those are prime things that a district needs to do," Mr. Mintrop
argued. "A school alone can't do those kinds of things."

"I think it's happening because states and researchers and
policymakers are beginning to figure out that districts, indeed, do
matter," agreed Jennifer O'Day, a principal research scientist at the
American Institutes for Research's Palo Alto, Calif., office.

Districts can make a difference through their action and through
their inaction, she added, and in ways that are not always purposefully
tied to instruction. As an example, she noted that human-resource
policies can have a big impact on how effectively teachers are
distributed across schools.

Experience also has shown that savvy districts can improve schools,
in places such as Charlotte- Mecklenburg, N.C., and Sacramento,
Calif.

Moreover, as the National Governors Association points out in a 2003
report, "Reaching New Heights: Turning Around Low-Performing Schools,"
unless districts are on board, they can hamper or entirely derail state
efforts.

At the same time, the federal No Child Left Behind law, the 2001
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has
prompted states to adopt strategies for intervening in low-performing
districts.

The law requires states to identify districts that fail to make
"adequate yearly progress" and to take corrective actions in those that
do not improve.

States also are finding that they have limited capacity to directly
help the large number of schools identified as failing to make adequate
progress under the federal law.

"No Child Left Behind obviously has put a lot of added emphasis
here," said J.B. Buxton, the senior education adviser to Democratic
Gov. Michael F. Easley of North Carolina.

"When you begin to go from identifying roughly 15 schools you have
to go into every year, and another 50 you have to give voluntary
assistance to, to somewhere like 300 to 500 schools," Mr. Buxton said,
"you're no longer talking about a school-assistance strategy. You've
talking about a district- assistance strategy."

"What we know is if we don't get about the business of building the
capacity of our districts, and the leadership in our districts, to not
only turn around schools but also to lead continuous improvement
efforts themselves," he said, "we're just forever on the
treadmill."

Under its Local Education Agency Assistance Program, or LEAAP, the
state is sending teams to work with central-office personnel in North
Carolina districts with large proportions of low-achieving students,
just as it has done previously with individual schools.

"I think that No Child Left Behind has nudged states into doing what
they might have done otherwise," said Commissioner Yecke of Minnesota.
"The fact that there are some underperforming districts is not a
secret. They exist across the country. And the question that we have to
ask ourselves is, how long should parents wait?"

'Unnecessary'

But not everyone is enthusiastic about states' newfound commitment
to intervene in districts.

School board members in New Orleans have criticized state plans to
remove individual schools from their control. In part to prevent that
from happening, district Superintendent Anthony Amato has unveiled a
plan to form a separate "renaissance district" in the 80,000-student
school system to provide support for academically unacceptable
schools.

Among other provisions, the plan would focus on recruiting fully
certified teachers for those schools, reducing pupil-teacher ratios,
and adopting research-based literacy and math curricula.

In Virginia, the state school boards' association has come out
swinging against the legislative proposal introduced there.

"It's unnecessary," said Frank E. Barham, the executive director of
the Virginia School Boards Association. "There's been no demonstrated
need for this at this point in time."

The legislation would give the Virginia board and the state
department of education the authority to conduct academic reviews of
underperforming districts, similar to those now conducted of individual
schools. School districts would have to draw up corrective-action plans
to raise student achievement and submit those plans for approval by the
state board. If a district failed to carry out its plan, the state
board could petition the courts to compel compliance.

Virginia's constitution gives control of schools to local school
boards, and gives the state board of education a "supervisory" role
only. It does not permit the state to take over low-performing
districts.

Mr. Jackson, the state board president, said only a handful of
Virginia districts would likely be affected by the legislation.

But Mr. Barham said the state already has the authority to report
districts that are not implementing the state's standards of quality to
the state attorney general. The attorney general can ask a judge to
compel compliance.

"And if they don't comply, there's a provision in the code for them
to fine, suspend, or replace the superintendent," Mr. Barham said.

He also argued that the state board of education, which is appointed
by the governor, should not have the authority to discipline locally
elected school boards. And he questioned the record of other states at
improving low-performing districts in which they've intervened.

"I don't know where that's worked in any other state," Mr. Barham
asserted.

'Dual-Pronged Approach'

Indeed, past efforts by states to take over low-performing districts
have led to mixed results. In general, states have been more successful
at cleaning up financial and management problems than in boosting
student performance.

For her part, Ms. Yecke of Minnesota is not eager to run school
districts directly. "That's not where I want to go in this state," she
said. "We're a very strong local- control state, and I believe that
there are steps that we can take before we become the state board of
education for a district."

The key, she said, is to recognize that districts play two
functions: administrative and instructional. "I think the earlier state
takeovers focused strictly on the efficiency piece," she said. "And we
have to make sure that we have a dual- pronged approach."

Vol. 23, Issue 20, Pages 1, 21

Published in Print: January 28, 2004, as States Train Sights on School Districts for Interventions

Read a
summary of Virginia House Bill 1294, which would allow the Virginia
state board to bring to court those districts uncooperative in the
effort to improve student achievement. Posted by the Virginia General Assembly. See also the
full
text and status of
the bill.

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